Test Drive
by Pipsqueak
Summary: Darien's on parole after being framed by Manny Merrick, when he runs into Manny's girlfriend. Just how is he going to extract his revenge?


TEST DRIVE Author: Pipsqueak Rating: PG-13 (all nice and watered down just for ff.net) Spoilers: FFH Category: Angst, I guess, now that I had to go and neuter it just so I could post it Disclaimer: Not mine, except for Kim, Murphy, Freddie, et al. Darien and Manny Merrick belongs to Sci Fi, damn them (  
  
Mucho thanks to Suz and AXZ for being such a wonderful betas. They made sure it was Darien who got caught with his pants down and not me! :-p  
  
The two paper airplanes zoomed through the air side by side, each egged on by the hoots and hollers of their respective factions. Leading by a nose was the standard model, a folded-up piece of yellow legal paper that any third-grader could have made. Streaking a close second was an impressive piece of American aeronautical origami with a sharp peaked beak reminiscent of the Concord. The latter had just taken the lead with an impressive loop- the-loop maneuver when the showroom door opened, and Murphy, the dealership manager, walked straight into the finish line.  
  
With an annoyed grunt, he batted away the flying paper pests, then fixed an peevish glare on the assembled crowd of salesmen and mechanics. "Alright, alright, show's over," he bellowed, sending a baker's dozen of young men scurrying back to desks and garage bays. He turned a jaundiced eye on one in particular and asked, "Hey, Fabio, you gonna clean this mess up or what?"  
  
"What makes you think it was me?" whined a slender young man with shiny chestnut hair that fell straight to his shoulders. If he could've had his way, it would have fallen straight to his ass, one inch for every month spent at Soledad, but a few too-close encounters in the shower with his fellow inmates had convinced him of the folly of vanity, and so he had compromised on the shorter length.  
  
A collective snicker rose up from the rest of the salesmen as they all tried to avoid looking at the perennial locus of chaos in their midst.  
  
"Because it's always you, Fawkes. Now pick this crap up or am I gonna have to have another little chat with your parole officer?" Murphy threatened.  
  
Darien rose with a woebegone sigh. "Nah, nah, I'm getting it, I'm getting it." He picked up the planes and dumped them in the trashcan, then sidled over to Freddi, his partner in crime. "Gee, thanks for helping me out there, Fred," he groused. "Just for that I'm taking your next up."  
  
Potential customers had been few and far between for the past few weeks. As a result, the salesmen had resorted to a rotating system of "ups", short for "up at bats". Just like in a baseball game, they adhered to a roster that specifically stated whose turn it was to greet and potentially sell the next prospect to enter the showroom. According to the day's line-up, at least three other salesmen were ahead of Darien, but Freddie was the senior salesman so he was batting top of the line-up. The next person to enter the showroom by rights should have been his.  
  
The older man smiled, a gesture that only his close friends would notice since his large, blonde walrus mustache hid most of his mouth. "And just what makes you think I'm gonna let you get away with that, kid?"  
  
Darien grinned back. "'Cuz if you don't, I'm gonna have a little chat with your wife about that lap dance you bought when we got paid last Friday."  
  
"Hehehe," came the older man's chagrined chuckle. "You know what, kid, you just might be getting the hang of this business after all. Anything for a sale, just like I taught you."  
  
Darien walked back to his desk and flopped into his chair. He most definitely did not want to be getting the hang of this business, or, indeed, anything that even remotely resembled honest work. He was only here because he had to be. Another three months and then his parole would be finished, and he could resume his normal nocturnal activities. Unfortunately until then, he was stuck in this hellhole of capitalism, taking trade-ins from drug dealers and trying to sell used lemons to deadbeats who couldn't scrape up enough credit to buy food stamps. It was just another form of prison really, no matter how much Murphy tried to convince Darien that he really had a talent for it.  
  
The bell over the door jingled. At the sound, Darien was up from his desk like a horse from the starting gate. He got about three steps before another bell went off, this one in his head. The girl who'd entered was stunning and also vaguely familiar to him.  
  
She smiled at him, as if she recognized him too, her slanted eyes crinkling at the edges. Her mane of blue-black hair hung straight down to her waist. He would have said that she was a veritable China doll, but her skin was more russet than yellow, a burnished tone belying a Pacific Island heritage rather than a strictly Asian one. Darien pictured himself in the middle of South Pacific, watching her diving naked into the ocean with an elegant splash from the cliffs of the mystical island of Balihi, only to have her emerge moments later and produce one perfect pearl on the tip of her strawberry pink tongue for him.  
  
"Darien? Darien Fawkes?" She smiled widely, running her hands over the breadth of his shoulders and then grabbing his hands. "It *is* you, isn't it?"  
  
"Ah yah, it's me ...," he felt the eyes of the showroom upon him and struggled vainly to come up with a name for the clearly familiar female, "ah...."  
  
"Kim, Manny Merrick's girlfriend. Don't tell me you've forgotten me already," she said, then lifted herself up on tiptoe and whispered in his ear, "I could never forget you."  
  
"Kim, Kim, yeah, that's right. Of course I remember you," he dissembled. The truth was he did remember her, just not her name. He'd always longed to get his hands on her petite breasts and firm backside, but Manny had been his lifting buddy, one of his closest friends. Now Darien was studiously avoiding all his old friends so as to elude the accompanying temptation until after his parole was over. But just three short months from now, he'd planned on diving right back into the life, and Manny was going to be the first call he made. "Wow, what are you doing here?"  
  
She giggled and nudged him the ribs. "I'm here to buy a car, silly."  
  
"Oh yeah." He rolled his eyes and screwed his face into a goofy caricature. "Good thing I'm here to sell to it to you, 'cuz let me tell you, the rest of these guys are sharks."  
  
She giggled again. "And I'm just sure you're gonna give me one for free."  
  
"Sweetie, if I could, I would," he assured her, as they walked out into the car lot. "Is there any one you're interested in in particular?"  
  
She hesitated a moment, then leaned into him. "Yeah, there's a really cool Beemer in the back I'd like to see."  
  
"Oh, excellent choice, madam," he teased her. The BMW in the back was actually a gorgeous model one of the local gang bangers had just traded in: chocolate brown metallic exterior, saddle tan leather interior with burlwood trim, a moonroof and tinted windows. "You know your cars," he nodded in appreciation.  
  
"Yeah, well, I've kinda had my heart set on a Beemer for a while. I've never been able to buy one on my own, but now Manny's gonna help me out," she explained.  
  
"He's gonna buy it for you as a present?" Darien's question was one part curiosity and two parts flat-out shock. Manny liked his ladies, but he liked his money more, and Darien couldn't imagine his old friend forking over the $23,000 it was gonna take for the car Kim was looking at. He took another look at Kim and shook his head. Nope, no matter how good her pussy was, it couldn't possibly be worth 23 grand.  
  
"Not exactly," she prevaricated. They'd reached the car, and she began leisurely running her hands over it as if she were stroking a lover's body. "You see, I caught him with my best friend and her girlfriend." She stopped her ministrations to the car for a moment and looked up at Darien in consternation. "Honestly if you can't trust two lesbians with your boyfriend, who can you trust? They *swore* they weren't bi!" she exclaimed, kicking a tire experimentally.  
  
"Ouch," was Darien's sympathetic response.  
  
"Yeah," she agreed. "So now he must pay. Hey, can we take it for a test drive?" she enthused.  
  
Darien hit a tiny button on the remote, and the door locks opened with a chirp. "Sure," he said, opening the driver's side door for her. "Ah, what are you doing? You gotta get in the front ...," he told her, watching in confusion as she slid into the back seat.  
  
"Not *that* kind of test drive, silly," she told him breathlessly, patting the seat next to her.  
  
Darien stuck his head in the back door intending to tell her no. He might be a thief and a con man, but he did have some morals. One of those was that he never poached in another friend's territory, be it a girl or a gig. But before he could get a word out, she'd launched herself at his mouth, cutting off any refusal he could make. By the time she managed to pull him in on top of her, the word 'no' had been effectively eradicated from his vocabulary.  
  
They tumbled about and groped each other for a bit, then he managed to gather what little wits he had about him. Business might be slow and the lot empty, but there was no sense in tempting fate. He pushed her off to the far side of the rear bench seat, tucked his legs into the back of the car and slammed the door shut. "Now, where were we?" he asked, turning to face her.  
  
**************************************************************************  
  
They lay back upon the seat gasping, breath and sweat mingling as surely as their bodies had. "My, my, my," she sighed, then abruptly dismounted and pulled a lime green thong from her purse. Slipping it over her ankles and up her thighs, she asked, "That the first time you've done it since the joint?"  
  
Darien adopted her businesslike demeanor and tucked himself back into his pants. "Ah yeah, actually, it was. Thanks."  
  
She favored him with a wide smile and chucked him under the chin. "De nada, babe. I figure Manny owes both of us a pound of flesh -- kinda funny we took it out of each other, don'tcha think?"  
  
"Huh?" Darien had just enough conscious thought left to wonder at her implication. "Whaddya mean?"  
  
"Well, I just thought, you know, since he cheated on me, and, you know, got you to take the rap these last, what -- 15 months?" She pulled out a compact and began meticulously reapplying her lipstick. "It's just funny."  
  
Darien's blood ran cold and he grabbed her by the shoulders. "Kim, what are you talking about?"  
  
She stared wordlessly at him, then shrugged free of his hands and dropped her makeup back into her purse. "You mean to tell me you don't know? Nobody told you yet?" She began giggling like a giddy teenybopper. "Oh, that *is* funny. They all knew -- Eddie the Mammoth, Dave from Open Sesame. Manny framed you, babe. Lifted your prints right off some free weights at the gym and planted 'em. I thought that's why you were so hot to screw me," she leaned over and gave his lips a quick lip, "'cuz he screwed you." She opened the door, climbed out of the car and busily set about readjusting her skimpy outfit.  
  
Darien climbed out after her, anger mixing with embarrassment. "Ah, yah, that's part of it," he tried to recover, "payback, man, it's a powerful aphrodisiac."  
  
"Whatever," came her witty reply. She shouldered her bag. "Anyway, thanks for the, uhm, test drive." She rolled her eyes and started out to the main parking lot.  
  
He walked her to the back lot gates. "Yeah, anytime," he told her, mind still processing the fact that the man he'd considered his closest friend had sent him to prison for over a year. "Hey listen," he added on impulse, "you like Beemers?" She nodded. "Well, we got a cherry one coming in as a trade on Tuesday. Real pretty silver grey number with charcoal leather interior, you interested?"  
  
She looked tempted but hesitated. "Well, I'm not sure. I mean I have already paid Manny back for Tina and Sue ...."  
  
Darien slung his arm around her shoulders. "Hey, did I ever mention that he was doing that little redheaded cocktail waitress down at the Laguna Lounge?"  
  
"Rita!" she stomped a stiletto-clad foot. "I *knew* something was going on with that bitch, and he swore to me..."  
  
"So, Tuesday good for you then?" He smiled and winked at her.  
  
"Oh yeah, babe, it's a date," she stated firmly and turned down the parking lot.  
  
Darien watched Kim's ass busily bump and grind its way back to her car and began making a mental list of all the women he'd screwed back when he and Manny had gone tomcatting in sunnier days. He figured he could easily come up with at least one new name a week, and as long as the BMWs kept coming in, perhaps the next three months wouldn't be quite such a bore. He tilted his head to get a better angle on her booty. Oh yeah, revenge was going to be sweet.  
  
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End file.
